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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254563">water flows under the bridge</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/sillyideas/pseuds/sillyideas'>sillyideas</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Futurama</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst, Brief mentions of suicide, Gen, Musing, Songfic, canon typical language, implied suicidal urges, probably canon compliant, sad boy hours, there might be a few continuity snarls</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-07 00:47:10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,609</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27254563</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/sillyideas/pseuds/sillyideas</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Fry thinks about his family.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>No Romantic Relationships - Relationship, canon-compliant freela, very slight mentioned freela</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>3</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>17</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>water flows under the bridge</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>
    <span>proud of your boy</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Fry thinks about his mom a lot. He tries not to dwell on the old days, but it’s impossible. He can’t just disregard the first twenty-five years of his life like they were nothing, even if they felt like nothing sometimes. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>i’ll make you proud of your boy</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He misses everyone, really. As imperfect as his family was, they were </span>
  <em>
    <span>family</span>
  </em>
  <span>. Sure, Dad was paranoid and a little rough around the edges, and Mom always seemed to care more about the TV than the people around her, and Yancy was always butting heads with his brother, but isn’t that what families are always like? As much friction as there was between Fry and his family, they all cared about him deep down, and he cared about them, too. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>believe me, bad as i’ve been, ma, you’re in for a pleasant surprise</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Mom was never… particularly proud of little Philip. He never had high marks on his school assignments to show her, he never thrived in social situations, he wasn’t a star athlete if he didn’t have his clover in his pocket. All he had was luck, video games, and heart. And even those weren’t 100% fortified skills. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>i’ve wasted time, i’ve wasted me</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He was sort of a troublemaker in his early years. He didn’t mean to be, he just wasn’t wired for school like his classmates were. He was absentminded and easily distracted and not very booksmart, and that meant his teachers called home a lot. Mrs. Fry, your son was talking over the teacher. Mrs. Fry, your son has missed three assignments in a row. Mrs. Fry, your son had to flip his behavior card to red today and that means after-school detention. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>so say i’m slow for my age, a late bloomer, okay, i agree</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He wanted to leave the Philip that disappointed everyone behind in elementary school, but it was something that followed him into middle and even high school. He gradually grew into less of an active nuisance and more of a kid who just didn’t even try, because he didn’t know what else to do, but that was just as bothersome for teachers who demanded he contribute to class. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>that i’ve been one rotten kid</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His grades were abysmal. The only reason he never had to retake a year was because he bribed Yancy with stolen candy to do his missing work at the end of every semester. He got caught the first time he pulled that stunt, but after he realized he could copy Yancy’s work into his own handwriting, it was smooth sailing. His parents didn’t have a clue; from behind the closed bedroom door it just seemed like their boys were studying together, when really Philip was playing on a Game and Watch while Yancy begrudgingly did the work and snarked at his little brother’s expense about how stupid easy it was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>some son, some pride and some joy</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>After turning in the bare minimum of fratriplagiarized work to get a passing mark on his report card, it’s not like his parents would be particularly proud of the Cs and Ds. It was a miracle, they thought, that he was passing at all, but a 73% was nothing to celebrate. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>but i’ll get over these lousin’ up, messin’ up, screwin’ up times</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And Philip knew he was “dumb”. He knew he would never make it in college, not unless he could smuggle an older brother onto campus in his suitcase. He wanted to make something of himself, he really, really did, but he had nothing to work with. Maybe if he’d just applied himself a little more, paid just a little more attention in class, skipped just a little less, maybe he wouldn’t have had to resign himself to a minimum-wage life. It wasn’t like that mattered, though. The past is in the past, you’ve only got the future to worry about, so man up and get off your ass. That was what Dad always said. Fry almost laughed to himself now at the irony of it all; Dad had no idea how right he was. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>you’ll see, ma, now comes the better part</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to resign to a minimum-wage life. He had potential, somewhere in him, he knew he did! There had to be something special about Philip Fry; why else would he be here, right? </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>someone’s gonna make good, cross his stupid heart</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>On the outside, Philip might have seemed like he didn’t care that his future was going down the drain. But internally, he was absolutely panicking. He didn’t want to be a loser in a dead-end job for the next sixty years, or whatever lifespan a soda junkie on his level had ahead of him. Maybe that was why he ate and drank so self-destructively, to reduce how long he’d suffer the life he was stuck in. That was certainly a grim thought, but not one that disturbed him as much as it should have. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>make good and finally make you proud of your boy</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He thought he was dead meat after he dropped out of college, and so did his parents. He’d never forget the look in Mom’s eyes when he came home. She had been so excited for him when he first left, she had bought him all his dishes and his microwave and his minifridge, she was looking forward to having a college football team to root for. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>tell me that i’ve been a louse and a loafer, you won’t get a fight here, no ma’am</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He’d screwed it all up just by being Philip. He felt like crap about it. He didn’t say anything to Mom, though; he knew it would just sound like he was fishing for reassurance. And as much as he loved receiving comfort from her, it wouldn’t be fair to her. And he was a man now, wasn’t he? He didn’t need his mommy holding his hand through his dumpster fire life. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>say i’m a goldbrick, a goof-off, no good, but that couldn’t be all that i am</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He had pleaded with her and Dad to give him a place to stay, just until he got on his feet, and with a lot of begging he finally scored a temporary sleeping place in the basement. It was kinda nasty, but it was fine. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>water flows under the bridge, let it pass, let it go</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>He almost felt a pang as he moved out for the second time to live with Michelle, but his parents were clearly glad to see him go. Not that Mom didn’t pull him into a hug before he left, though. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>there’s no good reason that you should believe me, not yet, i know</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>And it’s not like Philip’s life was all pain and suffering. While he wasn’t an absolute bundle of joy and success like Yancy was, Mom was at least glad to see he had a girlfriend, and a job, and a dog. Seymour always liked Mom better than Dad, something Fry remembered fondly. It was probably because she snuck him table scraps and Dad didn’t. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>but someday and soon</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>In 1999, Philip’s life wasn’t great, but it had been worse. Sure, tensions were rising between him and Michelle, and delivery boy salary was nothing to brag about, but Mr. Panucci was almost like a father to him in that same tough love way as Dad, and knowing that Seymour needed feeding and walks staved off any suicidal urges. Philip was doing better than, say, when he first dropped out of college and thought it was all over. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>i’ll make you proud of your boy</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>His life wasn’t much, but it was his. And then it all got ripped away from him in an instant. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>though i can’t make myself taller or smarter or handsome or wise</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>Maybe accentuating the negative in his old life was how Fry coped. He didn’t </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>to miss it, because he couldn’t go home. Ever. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>i’ll try my best, what else can i do?</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>But… he wondered. He had accomplished so much ever since he stumbled out of that cryogenic tube. He was still Philip, but he was </span>
  <em>
    <span>successful</span>
  </em>
  <span>. He had a job, friends, housing. He went on epic adventures. He was the most important person in the universe that one time, and that other time. He had a lifetime ahead of him, and one that didn’t fill him with dread. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>since i wasn’t born perfect like dad or you</span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <span>It had taken him so long to get there. A thousand years, in fact, to grow from your average loser into a distinguished disaster. It was a little too late to show Mom how far he’d gone. He had a best friend who was kind of a jerk, but once you got to know him he was still a jerk, but underneath that he was alright. He had genuine chemistry with a tough, no-nonsense woman that Mom and Dad would have been proud to call a daughter-in-law someday. He had gone to so many amazing places and seen so many amazing things. He wished he could send pictures, but time didn’t work that way. Mom would never know that he was thriving. Her Philip died in 1999, as a pizza boy who lived in his girlfriend’s apartment and brought in five dollars an hour. The Fry of the 31st century actually made something of himself. Not a lot, mind you, but </span>
  <em>
    <span>something</span>
  </em>
  <span>, and something that he was proud of. And he could never tell her about it. </span>
</p><p> </p><p>
  <em>
    <span>mom, i will try to try hard to make your proud of your boy. </span>
  </em>
</p><p> </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>song is “proud of your boy” from broadway’s aladdin</p></blockquote></div></div>
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